St. Elizabeth seeing prosperity

It has been two years since the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won the general elections, and in spite of the steady upward movement in the country's murder figure over the period, there has been quite a lot of positives taking place within the various sectors of the economy which are worthy of mention.

Late last year the parish saw the completion of the long overdue resurfacing work which has been done on the main thoroughfare stretching from Gutters on the border with Manchester all the way to Tomb Stone in Lacovia.

The parish has also seen the reopening of the ALPART Bauxite Plant at Nain which has resulted in the employment of several hundreds of persons as well as the reopening of several businesses in Nain and other adjoining communities.

Agriculture production has been expanding across several communities in all four constituencies. This is coupled with the recent renovation and upgrade of the Appleton Sugar Factory and Rum Tour which is expected to bring more tourists and further employment opportunities for residents of the area.

Recently there has also been an upgrade done to the Algix Aquatic Fish Farm at Barton District, one of the largest such facility in the English-speaking Caribbean resulting in more employment and increase economic activity in that part of the parish

The construction sector has been doing very well with quite a number of small/large commercial shopping complexes currently under construction in the towns of Santa Cruz and Junction. In addition, there are countless number of dwelling houses under various stages of construction.

It is very obvious that the Andrew Holness-led administration has done a fairly good job to date in trying to fulfil its promise of prosperity for Jamaica however, we should not lose sight of the fact that the foundation was already laid single-handedly by Dr. Peter Phillip during the People's National Party's last term as government it is the very said foundation upon which this perceived "prosperity" is being built.